The Devil You Know
by adlyb
Summary: After taking her powers, Sylar decides to take Claire with him. Claire just doesn't understand why. Written as a companion/backstory to A Devil's Bargain, but can be read independently. Set in season 2.


**The Devil You Know**

by adlyb

Disclaimer: I don't own anything except these words.

Spoilers: Everything through season 2, though I'll include the whole series just to be safe.

Pairing: Sylar/Claire

Rating: R

Word Count: 11,631

Warnings: Sex with a minor, violence, language, a little bloodplay

A/N: This was written in response to the many reviews I got for "A Devil's Bargain" asking that I answer the question of how Claire became Sylar's Claire.

* * *

><p>Somehow, it fails to surprise her when Sylar shows up in her bedroom one lovely pre-dawn morning in Costa Verde.<p>

"I'm trying to sleep. Can we do this in a few hours?" she tells him from beneath her pillows when the shadows finish coalescing and out steps a man.

"Sorry, Claire-bear. I'm on a schedule."

The sleep starts to clear from her mind and fear begins to seep in. She scans her room for a weapon (_there's nowhere to hide, not even under the covers_). She's just snatching the butter knife sitting on the edge of her nightstand, blade still sticky with last night's cupcake frosting, when he sighs, as though he is very tired of this game, and grabs her.

* * *

><p>She stabs him with the butter knife anyway.<p>

Tenderly, he cups her hand in his (_she is still holding the blade between his shoulder tendons_) before squeezing hard enough to break all the little bird bones in her hand. He withdraws the knife and tosses it on the floor, a few feet out of her reach.

Her hand throbs in his grip. The bones dance madly under her skin, trying to realign and set, but unable, ultimately, to squeeze past the wall of his fingers.

"Do you mind letting go of my hand?" she asks.

He tilts his head and looks at her. "Are you afraid?"

She has trouble seeing him against the white glare coming in from the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him.

In this light, he is nothing but a dark silhouette, a faceless boogeyman.

"Yes."

He laughs and lets her go.

She runs toward the bank of windows behind him and jumps thirty-two stories down (_she knows because she counts as the long seconds tick by_). The wind whipping at her hair reminds her of Texas, and she has enough time to get a good look at the city skyline before she goes kasplat on the sidewalk.

* * *

><p>She learns, with more than a little bitterness, that she's not in America. She's somewhere in Asia, she's sure of it, she just can't figure out <em>where<em>. Worse, hiding is almost impossible when she's the only blonde on the street and small children want to touch her hair.

She has no money, and she can't read any of the signs (_Where _is_ she? China? South Korea?_).

He finds her a few miles from where she jumped.

She doesn't want to go with him but she has the feeling she really has no choice.

* * *

><p>"What's wrong, Claire? Seoul not to your liking?" he asks as he practically drags her up a staircase.<p>

"Where's Soul?"

He turns to look at her like she's stupid. "Don't they teach you anything in Texas?"

"Sorry, maybe I'd know more if I weren't being hunted by a dangerous psychopath."

He shrugs. "If it wasn't me, it'd be someone else. I can think of a few people who'd do worse things to you than I can."

"Worse than slicing my head open? Don't think so."

He leers at her, really pausing to give her a once over. "_Much _worse." Blood from his shoulder wound blooms like a flower over his heart.

The only reason she doesn't bring it up is because she doesn't want to hasten the inevitable.

* * *

><p>He uses his telekinesis to throw a sixth floor door open and pushes on her arm until she steps through the door herself.<p>

Claire can tell from the way his eye twitches that his shoulder is bothering him.

She scans the room.

It's a different building than the one they'd arrived in, and the windows are too small for an encore dive. No knives lying handy either. Just her, Sylar, and a wooden coffee table.

He raises a heavy eyebrow and gestures toward the table. "Shall we?"

* * *

><p>"Why me?" she asks as he lays her out on the table. "Why not some other girl? I can't be the only one who heals."<p>

"Your power isn't exactly easy to come by, Claire."

"But I'm not unique," she presses.

"No, you're not."

Confirmation makes her relax, even as she sees his eyes squint as he decides where it will be best to cut her.

He leans over her, and his chin is close enough for her to see each individual hair. "You were fishing. You really were worried you were alone."

"So? I'm the freakiest of the freaks. It's good to know I'm not the only one." She takes a hard, brave look at his hands as he fixes them over her cranium. "Even if…"

She never finishes the sentence.

He cuts her in a slow, steady stroke above the ridge of her brow.

The pain as he razors through the bone is immeasurable.

Dry air swells over what she realizes must be the inside of her skull as his fingers invade the delicate weave of synapses webbing the organ.

She can feel his fingers sifting through the excess material, and she imagines it must be like scooping seeds from a pumpkin.

"Don't wiggle so much."

"Why aren't I dead?"

He never takes his eyes from the mess he's making of her head when he answers her. "Who said you even could die, Claire? Do you even understand a tenth of what you are capable?"

He takes her silence as a confirmation.

The blood from his shoulder drips on her face as he leans over her. It slides into her eyes like sweat and he must have his fingers in her reflexes, because she has to make the conscious decision to blink the fluid out.

His fingers brush against something (_she wishes she knew _what) and uncomfortable pleasure spreads from her lower stomach. The sudden disappearance of her pain, coupled with the unexpected pleasure, makes stifling the moan that gathers at her lips particularly difficult.

She does her best to turn it into a question—"How much longer?" – but she cannot keep the breathiness out of her voice.

"Found it." He draws the words out long and syrupy.

He cannot see the way she looks at him as she bites her lips to keep her blissful sighs sealed inside of her and she is thankful. She'd be absolutely mortified if he realized she was studying the way he frowned at her innards, the way he smiled as understanding ticked together for him (_and that she liked it_).

She watches in a perverse state of fascination as his shoulder knits back together and a final two drops of blood spatter like freckles on to her face.

Sylar is almost gentlemanly when he takes her hand and pulls her into a sitting position. Carefully, he aligns her scalp with the rest of her head. He seems particularly satisfied as the seams of her skin press back together. "Just like you were never broken at all."

The deepness of his voice as he wipes the blood from her brow makes her blush.

He notices.

Claire Bennett has never felt so much like prey as when he cocks his head and a slow smile starts to unfold on his face.

"What have we here?" he murmurs.

She blushes harder and scoots as far back on the table, away from him, as possible.

"If we're done here, I want to go back."

His eyebrows shoot halfway to his hairline as he leans into her personal space. The expression is meant to mock her, she is sure. Stupid serial killer.

"You know, I only brought you here because I didn't want your father interrupting before I finished and I knew you'd try some ridiculous getaway stunt. But now… I'm thinking this could be more interesting than I had anticipated."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

He rolls back his shoulders and takes a pace around the room. "You know, over my Mexican hiatus, I remembered how pleasant it could be to have a companion."

She's about to tell him she has no idea what he's talking about, but thinks better of it as she sees a familiar shadow in his eye. It bears a sickeningly similar appearance to the one Brody had the night of the bonfire.

He looks out the window. Whatever he sees seems to confirm whatever wacked out idea he's come up with (_she wishes she were tall enough to see over his shoulders_), because he spins on his heel to grab her about the arms. "You're coming with me."

* * *

><p>If Claire had a dollar for every time she'd stabbed, punched, or scratched Sylar since he dragged her across the Pacific, she'd have, well, two whole dollars.<p>

"That's it. Carrying me halfway across the world so you can lobotomize me, fine, but asking me to stay on as your personal companion? _No_. This is too fucked up, even for you." She punctuates each word with a jab to his chest.

He catches her hand easily on the final word and asks, "Are you done now?"

"No, I'm not done. This is _crazy_. This is beyond crazy. This is _my head might explode from the sheer incomprehensible bad ideaness _of this."

"If it explodes, it's not like it won't just fish itself back together."

When she goes for the third dollar, Sylar breaks her arm, and she wants to howl from the ecstasy of it.

She hates him just a little more than usual right then.

* * *

><p>Sylar gives her absolutely no heads up when he decides it is time to leave Seoul. All she gets is a surprise!hug that just frankly creeps her out and <em>pop! <em>They arrive in Juno, Alaska.

"Who did you kill to get that power?" she asks a little dully as he checks them into a lodge-style hotel room.

"Little Asian guy. Kind of soft, like a marshmallow."

"That's disgusting."

"I'm not joking, he was just like that."

"No, it's disgusting that you would talk about someone like that," she clarifies.

He shrugs. "Truth's the truth."

* * *

><p>The room isn't the biggest room Claire's ever stayed in, but it's better than the bare-bones hotel room Sylar ended up choosing for their week in Seoul.<p>

She tries not to linger too long on what Sylar was doing that week.

After they check in, Sylar leaves her to her own devices for a while.

She wants to escape, but the windows are barred and Sylar has broken the lock mechanism on the inside of the door, so it is only functional with a key, effectively trapping her in the room. Even the telephone has been disassembled.

Ideally, she would be using the time to find a way to hurt him or kill him, but she knows that he will only swat her away like an insect if she tries, and, lucky girl that she is, she will always get back on her feet a moment later. Hurting him now just seems pointless.

Claire resigns herself to a shower, setting the water to a scalding temperature just to feel the way the water boils and peels away the flesh of her back. The sensation sends her into orgasm. She has to brace herself against the tile wall when she feels her inner muscles start to spasm and her legs start to wobble.

Outside, she can hear the lock on the room door clicking open. She imagines Sylar must be back and wonders a little if he's brought dinner back with him (then—_does she even need to eat?_).

He barges in on her without even knocking.

She goes still under the stream.

He says nothing to her as he starts up the sink.

The curiosity gnaws at her.

Slowly, she leans her body so she can see through the sliver between the shower curtain and tiled wall.

Sylar stands at the sink, shirt a sodden, discarded mess on the floor, splashing water over his arms and chest.

Claire regrets spying when she realizes he is covered in blood.

The seconds stretch by longer than they should as Claire watches him scrub himself. Even when he had her laid open in front of him, she had never felt this intimately close to him. Her stomach rolls as she fights the desire the flex of his muscles under his bare skin inspires. She cannot tell whether her physical reaction to him or the impossibly red blood coating his skin sickens her more.

Blood does not make her squeamish. She's the girl who tucks loose ribs back into place without even pausing what she is saying. She's the girl who could not resist touching the glass that killed her uncle, who felt no repulsion when it slipped like a cool eel from his nape. This may be the first time since she manifested that blood (_an excessive amount_) has ever been more than part of the mundane facts of life.

Finally, Sylar finishes. He takes a hand towel and rubs it through his wet hair. Just before he is about to step into the outer room, he turns and looks directly at her.

"Don't use all the hot water."

It is all she can do to keep standing after that, her legs are shaking so hard.

* * *

><p>Claire is still trembling when she wraps a towel around her chest and walks back into the room. Her wet feet leave little footprints in the scarlet carpet and the image just reminds her of the scene in the bathroom all over again.<p>

She doesn't realize she's staring until Sylar speaks.

"You know, I thought you were spying on me before, but now I realize that there's actually something wrong with your sensory relay."

"If there is, it's probably your fault." She doesn't want to tell him he's right, just not in the way he thinks.

* * *

><p>Trying to get settled for the night is always this weird dance between wanting to keep as much space between herself and Sylar when there's only ever one bed and being unwilling to sacrifice her comfort when he's the one who's dragging her along.<p>

This particular night, getting to sleep is made that much worse by the memory of what happened in the bathroom. It's such a little moment, she reasons, it should mean nothing (_but never before has she looked at Sylar and felt anything other than disgust, loathing, fear, _at the very least annoyance).

He lies too close to her for her comfort. He doesn't try to touch her at night, but neither does he avoid it. His presence is just a constant that she's becoming frighteningly accustomed to. Another week and she worries she won't even fidget when she gets ready to sleep beside him.

She lets it go and closes her eyes.

She wonders what her family is doing. Her father must be out of his mind right now. Is he looking for her? Is he afraid? Does he know Sylar took her?

Claire doesn't know any of the answers.

Beside her, Sylar starts to snore, soft little pants as his throat closes and his jaw hangs open.

She turns over to look at him. He's not bad looking. It was hard to get a good read on him when she first met him—it was all shredded lockers and caved in faces and Jackie's skull being ripped wide open and no peek-a-boo prize inside at all—but she'd found him patently unattractive. His brows were too thick and his lips were too heavy and his nose looked just a little too bulbous against his round face.

He's thinned out and toned up since then and the difference it's made in the contours of his body is striking. Newly cut diagonals emphasize the masculine cut of his jowls; cheekbones hollowed from the weight loss render his nose striking rather than gawky. Her eyes travel down, slipping past his arms and chest. Time in Mexico (_she doesn't want to ask _what_ was up with that_) has hardened him, and altogether it makes the embarrassing situation she is in all that much worse.

Claire rolls the other way so she's facing the door and does her best to ignore the creepy (_when did he get hot?_) serial killer freak on the other side of the bed.

* * *

><p>In the morning he gives her a little more heads up than he did the first time.<p>

"We're finished here. Grab your bag."

She complies with less reluctance than she should, she thinks, as he fixes a hand on her shoulder and they blink into Albany.

For about a month, they cut a swath through the Northern hemisphere. Every few days, they change cities. She begins to forget what life was like before this endless string of hotels.

She suggests moving South, tells him she misses the wide skies and open land, that the North is too crowded and sometimes she feels like she can't breathe.

"I really hate Texas," he tells her. "And I hate South America even more."

"Geez, you're such a whiner. Do I say, 'I really hate Seoul' just because things didn't go my way there?"

He gives her a knowing look and smirks. "I don't think Seoul worked out too badly for you."

* * *

><p>What she still doesn't get is what Sylar wants her for.<p>

The question throbs steadily behind her eyes as she thumbs through old magazines and flips through tv sitcoms, waiting for him to return from his little errands.

She had feared he would use her, force her into his bed or to play weird death/sex games to satisfy his kinks. The look he'd given her in Seoul, when he decided to make the kidnapping permanent, implied all of that.

Instead, he'd kept her along for the ride, barely saying two words to her on some days. Those days irritated her the most—what was the point in forcing her to tag along if he didn't want to even talk to her?

She's just settling in for a good brood when Sylar eases through the door.

He's dressed in a black long sleeve shirt and jeans, and it always strikes her how dark his hair and eyes are when he is dressed liked this.

He doesn't say anything to her as he kicks off his shoes and sprawls on the bed.

A few hours later, and the lights are off and she can't sleep at all.

"Sylar? Are you still awake?" Nothing. "Sylar?" Wasn't he supposed to have super-hearing? Was it really super-_bad_ hearing? She shakes him roughly. "Sylar."

"_What?_" He's up now, scanning the room like there might be someone hiding in the shadows. "Claire? What is it?"

Now that he's up she doesn't know how to put her thought into words.

"Well?"

"Never mind."

She can see the whites of his eyes as he stares at her. "Whatever," he mutters as he turns back to his pillow.

"What is this?"

"Hmm?"

"Me. You. Us. What is this? Why am I here? Why not just let me go? What's your purpose?"

"It's late."

"Technically, neither of us needs to sleep."

"That so?"

"I didn't sleep for over two weeks last summer when we were moving and I wasn't tired at all."

He considers her for a few minutes. The weight of his eyes gives her goosebumps, and they're not totally unpleasant.

"I've always kinda liked you, Claire."

All too quickly, she regrets asking as dread tightens in her chest.

"But it's more than that," he continues. "Everything I do, every path I take, leads me back to you. Your power being so… _irresistible_, it pulled me across the country just to find you. Your blood, healing me when the Company injected me with that virus—"

"Huh?"

"Oops." He says the word, but it's clear he doesn't really mean it. "Cat's out of the bag. See, I spent a few months south of the border, powerless, dying. Your blood saved me. So, in a way, it's you I have to thank for all of… _this_."

She can't see where he gestures, but she knows _this _means all the people he's killed since he returned stateside.

"So what? You're tired of running in to me and you thought you'd do yourself a favor and take me with you?"

"Essentially."

"I think you're making excuses."

"Think about it, Claire. We're both going to live forever—why not spend it together?"

"That's not a good enough reason."

"Okay, how about this—" He has her pinned before she has time to understand that he's moving at all. His hard body presses her into the mattress.

Claire ineffectually struggles against him. Unfortunately, all she manages to do is grind in to him when she tries to twist away, and the whole experience sits like a thick mud of excitement and unease in her gut.

Sylar hums as he noses the line of her jaw, his stubble irritating the soft flesh of her neck until it's rubbed raw.

Pressure begins to build between her legs as what-should-have-been-pain spreads from the tip of her chin to the cleft of her collarbones.

She squeezes her eyes shut as she tries to focus on anything except the way his hands have begun mapping her body, tracing the distance between sternum and navel, palming the circumference of her breasts.

The first person she thinks of should be West (sweet, bold, _simple _West). He is (_was?_) her boyfriend, right? But they've never done this, and she frankly can't imagine him nipping at the meager flesh at the juncture between hip and rib the way Sylar is.

Stars explode behind her eyes and she realizes he's biting her harder than a normal lover's caress. Absently, she bats at the wound and her fingers wipe away blood.

He nudges her hand out of the way, laving the spot. His tongue dips into the wound, keeping her flesh from knitting itself back together and pressing on the nerves right under the skin.

Claire can't keep the moan from climbing out of her mouth.

Sylar looks up at her. The angles of his face, which she had so recently admired under the same moonlit shadows, are all predatory. Comprehension winds his mouth into a wicked smile as he bends his head to suck hard on the open wound.

_He knows_. And he's _fascinated_. An instinct at the back of her mind tells her—_Run. If you don't run now, there will be no escaping. _

But what can she do to stop him? He's telekinetic and regenerative and there's no way to kill him or even knock him out—_except there is. _

He reaches between them to pull her legs farther apart as he explores the way her belly dips near the seam of her legs. He is almost _there _and the friction he applies becomes almost unbearable as he tugs at her sleeping shorts, lifting her hips with just the use of one hand, and slides them off completely. Her underwear (_red and white cotton that suddenly feel too girlish for this interlude_) goes the same way.

Claire lies bare beneath him. She squirms as he takes his time looking at her before settling low on the mattress and hooking his arms around her knees.

The touch of his tongue is somehow different than she thought it would be. Not the wet, clumsy slide like in a French kiss. This is a long, firm stroke down the center, followed by a nip at her inner thigh-bone that damages the ligaments for a blissful minute. When he looks up at her, his chin and mouth shimmer damply. He keeps his eyes on hers as he continues working her.

She can't keep her legs from shaking or her back from arching, but she can keep her dignity. Claire stares him down until she feels him smile against her and he turns his attention solely to wringing her out.

She can't let Sylar distract her. She counts to ten just so she doesn't focus on what his mouth is doing to her, but her concentration slips and she ends up counting his tongue strokes. Claire shuts her eyes and thinks of anything to get her mind off of the (_fantastic_) oral sex she's having with her worst enemy.

Unwanted, Peter's face emerges in her mind, the way he looked just before Nathan whisked him away.

Claire feels really terrible then and not in the mood to be doing this at all anymore (_at least her concentration problem is solved_).

She throws her head to the side and hopes it's a convincing feign as she uses the motion to search the bedside table for anything she could use.

Sylar lifts himself onto his elbows and, with deliberate slowness, drags a finger down the length of her inner thigh, grazing the inside of her knee before circling back up and flitting over her clit. Without particular warning, he plunges his fingers inside of her.

Claire throws her arms up by her head and grabs the headboard. Her right hand is a meager few inches from the courtesy pen by the phone. All she needs is the right moment.

His fingers pump her slowly and she nearly loses herself completely as he descends upon her breast, licking at the sweat and rocking against her. He's really pretty good at this and she wonders who the hell he's been practicing on.

She's close. Just another few strokes.

He groans and nuzzles in to her, baring his neck.

Without hesitation, Claire snatches the pen and jams it into the kill-spot.

Sylar goes limp in her arms.

For a full five minutes, she allows his dead weight to crush her. She does not dare breathe lest she stir the beast.

Finally convinced he is dead, Claire rolls him over and kneels by his side. She pats down his pockets, pulling out his wallet but failing to find anything else of any worth. A little disappointed, she hops off the bed and snatches her underwear off the floor and her jeans from the drawer she had meticulously folded them into earlier that night. She stuffs the wallet in the back pocket where she can feel the reassuring heft of it.

She is just about to leave when she feels an inalterable urge to look at him one last time.

In death he is himself perfected. Poetry has never come easily to her, but she thinks she begins to understand it as she gazes at his glass eyes and slack, moist mouth.

Dutifully, she shuts his eyes. She hesitates.

With no one to witness her, she bends her head to his and brushes a faint kiss against his lips.

Then she is gone, like she was never there at all.

* * *

><p>Sylar's wallet does not have enough money in it to get her very far.<p>

She resents him a little for slacking on his finances since he acquired teleportation and started, _you know_, killing people who didn't let him have his way.

Claire catches a bus out of town, but her ticket only takes her to the next state. From there, she walks a few miles until she is able to hitch a ride in exchange for a bj in the back of a pick-up truck.

The experience disgusts her. It's the first time she's ever done this and if it weren't a matter of life and death she wouldn't be here, trying to tamp down the ache in her jaw and the tears that prick her eyes when this stranger's thrusts trigger her gag reflex. She wonders if this would have been better with Sylar. She doesn't allow herself to think like that, though, and shuts the thought down as soon as it registers.

At least she figures she can't catch an STD.

The intimate stranger takes her as far as Philadelphia before he makes her get out of the car.

"You're not gonna bring me farther?"

"It'll cost you."

Claire doesn't like the way he eyes her and she really regrets her barter now that the taste of him has been settling in her mouth all day.

"No thanks."

In Philly she wants to call home. She feels far enough from Sylar that she doesn't worry about lingering and she searches for a phone bank. She finds one, finally, at a bus station. For a few minutes, she stands with the receiver pressed to her ear while she tries to recall the family numbers. Unfortunately, all of their numbers have changed since Odessa, and, without her cell phone, she cannot recall a single one of them. She considers calling the operator to look them up, but then realizes that with fake names come distinctly zero records of their new numbers. She hangs the phone up and listens for the satisfying click of the receiver.

The agents bag her when she turns.

The normal tactics don't work on Claire. Injections affect her system the way a drop of food coloring affects an ocean, and a taser only incapacitates her while it is in direct contact with her flesh (_the uncomfortable fact that the electricity won't even hurt a little is something Claire would rather not consider_). Because of this, they have to use a little discretion to nab her and stuff her in a van without attracting any attention.

Inside the van, she can hear them talking. She knows they are agents from the conversation—and she realizes that there is a very long trip ahead of her now.

She doesn't recognize them—the one driving the van is perhaps her father's age, the other, who squats in the back securing her wrists to the window handles with plastic slip ties, is a bit younger.

Once he's finished, the younger one sidles up to her and sniffs at her neck. "I hear this one regenerates."

"Don't play with that one too much. Bishop wants her in tact when she arrives."

"He's not gonna notice if I have a little fun first. She'll heal right up in a jiffy, right?"

The older one doesn't respond, just turns his eyes to the road.

Claire realizes that he's decided to turn a blind eye to his partner's actions.

The younger one, it seems, has a penchant for torture. "I'm gonna make you scream, little girl," he whispers against her cheek.

Going in, Claire expects knives, or dull instruments if he's the _one of us _half of the equation. If he's the _one of them_ half, maybe he's a pyrotechnic or a freeze man or can shoot electricity. At any rate, none of these possibilities frighten her. She's more worried he's going to rape her, and then worried that any force he uses won't make her respond like he's hurting her and she doesn't know how she'd ever recover from that.

The thought makes her hate Sylar just a little bit more for everything he's done to her.

He surprises her when all he does is lay his hand against her forehead. "Don't try to close your eyes," he tells her.

For a moment, she wonders if he has the same power as the Haitian. This possibility doesn't particularly worry her; she's relatively certain her brain would be able to reorganize the memories without any difficulty.

Claire is looking right at the younger one, studying the way his eyelashes curl and the broken line of his nose so she will always remember his face. She's looking right at him, but sometime between blinks her surroundings change.

* * *

><p>The sky is dark now, she notices.<p>

All around her, buildings reach up toward the hidden stars, like a jungle of metallic arms careening into a reckless future.

Unfamiliar weight pulls at her arm, and with a little alarm she realizes she is holding a bright and deadly gun.

Kirby Plaza yawns ahead of her.

Peter's shirt is stained with Sylar's blood and his hands glow a dreadful hot red, lighting up the plaza like a meteor.

This moment is it. It is for her to kill him.

Claire looks into those dark eyes she's envisioned every night since homecoming, letting the love she's locked in the most secret part of her out just as her fingers squeeze the trigger. As the bullet connects, crushing the back of his skull and splattering his brain into innumerable puddles all around their feet, Claire realizes there might have been another way.

* * *

><p>She gasps as the image fades.<p>

"You like?" the agent asks.

"What was that?" she whispers.

"My power. Do you want another show?" He doesn't wait for an answer. He nips her ear this time as the world breaks apart in front of her.

* * *

><p>Claire manages to get close enough to Ted Sprague to knock him out, but the radiation whips her skin off down to the bone. She ambles out of the house a skeleton sprouting new flesh like spring flowers.<p>

Not an hour later fresh hair whips her eyes as her father takes her further and further away from the place called home than she's ever been before.

He doesn't really want to speak to her and she can't blame him. He asked her to trust him (_how could she?_) and she asked him to tell her the truth (_why would he?_). This is the result.

A gray haired man with a slick smile waits for them in the middle of a bridge on a back road highway.

The sun slants warm yellow light over the water. Claire cannot remember a day that was ever so beautiful as this one.

"Thompson," her father greets.

"Good work, Bennet," Thompson tells her father as he takes her in to custody.

Before Claire can be thrust into the back of Thompson's car, her father makes his move.

It doesn't come fast enough.

A sniper's bullet catches her father in the neck. Blood shoots like a fountain from the wound, and he dies within seconds of the attack.

She tries to run towards him, but Thompson restrains her arm. Bruises burst along the fragile muscle. They will be gone by the time she peels her coat off to look for them, but in this moment they are there, just the same.

Another bullet cracks the air.

Claire turns toward Thompson, fearful of who may have been next.

He gives her that slick smile and murmurs, "Our friend the Haitian was ready to ambush. It seems he was meeting your father here."

She's really very sick by the time an unmarked black van pulls up. Two agents step out of the vehicle, carrying lethal force.

Thompson waves a little at her and speaks to her like she's a child. "Well, bye-bye then."

"Wait," she gasps between chest convulsions. "How did you know?"

"One of us, one of them. I brought a mind reader."

They leave her father's body in the dust for the vultures to pick over.

* * *

><p>Tears are leaking from the corners of her eyes and catching on her eyelashes like dew when she awakens.<p>

"So pretty when you cry," the younger agent coos. He licks a tear off her face. He takes a knife out and holds the blade under her eye. "What about when you scream?"

"Try it," she dares him. She hopes to provoke him, anything to prevent him from delivering anymore nightmare fantasies.

He shrugs and buries the edge of the knife under her eye, popping it out like a marble. Her eye rolls to the back of the van, picking up dirt as it goes.

She laughs at him. "Is that it? You _do _know who Sylar is, right? Because next to him, this is child's play."

He straddles her as her a fresh eye balloons out from the socket. "That's a neat trick. What else regrows?"

"Hey, knock it off," the older agent calls from the front seat. "I said keep her in one piece. You're lucky the eye came back. What if you cut something off and it don't grow back?"

"Fine, fine," the younger one says as he tucks his knife back into her coat. "I guess we better go back to our other game."

This time, Claire does scream.

* * *

><p>The dark imaginings unfold one after another, each spectacular, each as real and as inseparable from reality as the slow roll of the company van down the highway.<p>

None of them would be so bad, if she only knew they weren't real while she was in them.

The agent always gives her a moment in between, to let her know he's putting her back under. He gets off on watching her tremble as he works her into increasing, maddening terror, as he suggests what kind of fantasy they could visit next.

"You have a fixation on your father, don't you, little Miss Bennet? And your uncle. That's _sick_. Do you like that, little Claire Bennet? Do you like imagining what if…?"

"I don't feel like that about my father at all and you know it. You're twisting everything up."

He twirls a hand around her hair. "I notice you didn't correct me about your uncle."

All the blood must be draining from her face. She's sure of it.

"Incest." He lets the word sit heavy in the air. "I've never actually met someone with such filthy desires, Claire. I bet you lay awake at night, touching yourself and wishing it were your own blood uncle doing it for you instead. What would Peter have thought if he knew that was how you thought of him? What about your parents? Would they have looked at you differently? Or the Senator? What would he think of his daughter wanting his brother to put it to her? Would you like to see?"

That's it, then. He's found her very most secret, worst fear, the one too unspeakable to ever voice, even to herself, and he's going to make her live it.

Claire thrashes, let's the plastic slip ties cut her wrists until the blood slicks her skin like oil. When he tries to put his hand to her face she bites him, hard, and he screams profanities at her that make her ears burn.

"Hey, will you two be quiet?" the driver yells at them.

"Yeah, sure thing," the agent says as he pulls a tire wrench out from the back and uses it to smash her jaw into little pieces.

Blood floods her mouth but he doesn't let her spit.

He holds her mouth shut, allowing the loose bones to set into a mishmashed maze that make speech impossible. He duct tapes it together to give the bones time to re-fuse the way he wants them.

"This is kind of fun," he tells her conversationally.

The driver glances at the backseat. "Damnit, Matthews, I told you not to touch her."

"Relax, Turner. I'll fix it when we get close."

The driver grunts but doesn't push it.

The younger agent—_Matthews_—caresses her temple. "Relax. This is going to be _fun_."

The van flips over and everything goes to proverbial hell.

* * *

><p>The van lands in a ditch on the side of the highway. Turner lies still, probably unconscious, his face buried in an airbag. Matthews, on the other hand, has somehow managed to pull himself to his feet. He curses as he walks along the ceiling of the van toward his partner, ignoring Claire completely.<p>

If she weren't hanging from dislocated shoulders, her feet just barely grazing the roof of the car, this would be the perfect time to escape, she thinks.

"What the fuck happened?" Matthews screams.

The back doors rip clean of the van and crumple like paper as they shoot into the distance.

"Me."

In all of the many scenarios she's just witnessed, in all of the dreams she's ever had, Claire has never pictured herself so relieved as she is at the moment _he _steps into the van. _Better the devil you know._

Matthews squares his shoulders and aims his gun. "What's with the black? Who the hell are you supposed to be? A comic book super-villain?"

"My name's Sylar."

Matthews licks his lips. "Leave now and I won't report this."

"Sorry, can't. You see, you have something I want." Sylar pauses to consider. "Actually, you have two things I want, but your power is just a party favor, really." He smiles as he cuts Matthews open.

Matthews doesn't even have time to shoot his gun.

* * *

><p>Claire watches in silent fascination as Sylar stoops next to Matthews and starts looking through his brain.<p>

He takes his time, prodding through the flesh, picking neurons and nerve bundles. He might've been a wonderful surgeon, she thinks. No medical training and he can navigate something as complex as the human brain without the least difficulty.

"Nightmare manifestation and manipulation. Interesting." He wipes his hands on his thighs and looks up at her, finally noticing the duct tape. When he takes a step toward her, hand outstretched, she backs into the wall of the van.

She looks pointedly at his gory hands.

Sylar laughs a little under his breath and points a crooked index finger at her mouth.

The tape rips from her face.

Her jaw must be worse than she thought.

Sylar openly stares at it. "He did this?" He tilts his head toward the dead agent.

Her first reaction is to respond but all she gets is a sloppy gargle. The blood she had refused to swallow coats her tongue and dribbles down her chin. Finally she just nods yes, yes _he _did this.

He clasps a hand around her jaw and pats at the lumpy bones. "I'm going to have to break this so it can realign the right way. Are you ready?"

She nods against his palm.

His eyes never leave hers as he slowly, methodically, uses his telepathy to pry the fused bones apart.

Claire knows it must be working because it's sort of pleasant this time around.

She flexes her jaw. "Does it look right?"

"Like it never even happened." He extends his hand.

She could say the same thing about him. Dead twelve hours ago and now here he is, throwing vans off the highway and slashing people's heads open like it never even happened.

Claire takes his hand because, really, at this point, what else is there to do?

As they're stepping out of the van, she hears Turner start to wake up.

Sylar steps toward him.

"Leave him."

"I don't leave survivors."

"Just—I've had enough killing today."

He looks like he's about to argue, but he stops before he even gets the first word out. "The agent used his power on you."

She wants to look away, but he makes her look at him.

"Yeah. Turns out I'm an inherently violent person."

"I already knew that. Oh, and by the way," he added as an afterthought, "that was another one of my reasons why we're meant to be together."

"I never said I wanted violence."

"Claire, you didn't even blink the whole time I was extracting that agent's power. You weren't disgusted. You were mesmerized."

"So gore doesn't bother me. Have you _seen _my life? It's pretty much a guts and blood action joy ride, 100% of the time." She squints her eyes at him. "Mostly because of _you_, may I add."

"That's fair, I suppose. Point is, though, I don't leave survivors." He brushes past her.

"Please? For me?"

He hesitates. "On one condition."

"What?"

"I'll name it later. Promise me you'll meet it, and I'll let him live."

"How can I promise you without knowing what I'm promising?"

"Your choice." He gestures toward Turner and the man screams as his arm bends in the wrong direction.

"Fine! Deal. Happy?"

He withdraws. "Enough for now."

Sylar trudges over to wear she stands on the shoulder of the highway and wraps his arms around her. As if just remembering, he plucks his wallet from her jeans and takes a look inside. "Claire, there's no money in this. Where is it?"

"Spent it."

"You're not worth what you cost."

"I wish you believed that."

He wraps his arms a little tighter around her and they're off.

* * *

><p>The place he takes her to is hot and sticky. Familiar plants crowd the sky, but they're all much, much bigger than what she is used to.<p>

"Where are we?" she asks when she's had the chance to study her surroundings.

"Brazil."

"I thought you hated South America."

"I do. But I wanted to take you somewhere where you wouldn't bother escaping."

"How'd you find me, anyway? More importantly, how'd you become not-dead?"

"Inexperienced cop removed the pen when he got on scene. Wasn't difficult to walk out after that."

She shutters, because she knows what must have happened to anyone who tried to stop him from leaving.

"Should've stabbed you harder," she murmurs. "So how did you find me?"

"Man's gotta have his secrets, Claire." He leans in to her space. "I'll always find you, Claire. _Always_."

She believes him.

* * *

><p>The inn Sylar picks is far from the nicest he's ever chosen. The bed creaks threateningly when she sits on it, and only the thick web of mesh netting hanging from the crown of the bed keeps the insects off of them at night. When Sylar turns the lights off around midnight, she can hear cockroaches scuttling along the bare floor.<p>

Sylar is rough with her that night.

It's not like last night, where he took his time to seduce her.

He flips her shirt over her head and unzips her jeans without any foreplay. His own shirt soon follows.

He grinds into her, shoving a thigh between her legs and biting at her neck. He circles her wrists in his large hands and holds them against the mattress with bruising force, even though she remains limp in his arms. Dissatisfied with what they are doing, he rises to his knees and reaches for his belt buckle.

Before he can undo his own belt, Claire reaches out and undoes the clasp for him. She knows where this is going, and that her choices last night are to blame for this. It's not really fair no matter which way she looks at it (_does she even want this?_) but she's beginning to learn that life is very rarely fair.

Sylar doesn't move. He stays frozen, up on his knees, hands hanging loose by his sides as Claire methodically works the button, unzips his fly. He wears blue boxers underneath.

She traces the milky skin over his hip for a moment. She can tell he wants to grab her, but he remains still for her inspection.

Perhaps she is a little more experienced after the incident with the truck driver. Perhaps a little less timid. Whatever it is, she tucks her fingers inside the elastic of his boxers and pulls them down until his erection springs free. Without too much hesitancy, Claire reaches for it.

She takes the time to learn exactly the weight of it in her hand, to memorize the texture and the way Sylar's breath shutters from his lungs when she begins to stroke him. Much of what she does she does from instinct, the other things from curiosity. She braces herself against his shoulder as she pumps him. She wonders how long it will take for him to come. A few minutes? More? Much more? She doesn't have enough experience with these things to know.

Sylar hisses and she realizes her nail has scratched the head of his cock. The cut sews itself back together. A drop of pre-cum beads on the head.

Entranced, Claire leans closer and scratches the head again and watches her power manifest (_feels heady desire rip through her bones when she realizes _she _is the one who gives him this preternatural strength_). Thoughtlessly, she takes him into her mouth.

He rocks against her, slower and steadier than she would have imagined. His hands tangle in her hair and she feels his gaze on the top of her head as she probes him with her tongue.

Against her cheek, she can feel his thigh muscles bunch and his abdominals twitch.

She wonders if he's close. Will she have to swallow?

Her question is never answered.

Sylar pulls back and pushes her onto her back.

Before she's really cognizant of what's happening, he's stretching her legs up, up, up, so her knees knock against her ears and he's sinking inside of her and the feeling is just—_oh. _

A girl's first time is supposed to painful, and Claire's probably is, she just can't tell at all because the way he's moving his hips against hers is a delicious, liquid, _clock work perfect_ rhythm.

As his strokes elongate and begin to arc toward her pelvic roof, she begins to understand what this is about.

_Claire has power. Sylar wants it. Normally, he would just kill whoever had what he wanted, but he'll never be able to kill her. The only way to get what he wants is to possess her. _

The epiphany fuels her desire. She finds herself clinging to him as she rides out her orgasm.

He isn't very far behind her. When he comes inside of her, collapses on top of her in a sweaty haze, Claire finally understands what he wants from her.

She's a little surprised she is willing to give it.

* * *

><p>He doesn't hold her afterwards.<p>

Claire rolls over to face him, cringing a little as she moves within the sheets drenched in sweat and blood.

She finds she doesn't want to leave anymore. She'll stay with him, if he wants her to (_she knows now that whatever this is with him is less damning than the multitude of could have beens she's seen today_).

What is the new boundary between them? If she wants to, can she reach out and touch him?

Claire reaches for him but stops midway. This isn't right. He's a killer and probably actually a terrible person. Definitely not the sort of person she should be prepared to give herself to.

Sylar grabs her hand and pulls her over to him. His skin is hot and something feral inside of her cracks its jaws and awakens when he fits her against the length of his body.

He's not a good man, but maybe he could be her man.

* * *

><p>They carry on like this for a time.<p>

Sylar keeps them moving. During the day, when he's out, Claire gets time to herself. She does her best to keep herself busy, to avoid the indelible imprint Matthews has left seared on her brain.

_Always the brain_, she muses. _What about the heart?_

At night, when Sylar is clean and there isn't a single stray red drop on his skin to hint at his activities, she lets him take her. It's rough and it's fun and Claire begins to feel like the only thing that ever makes her feel better is when Sylar is inside of her, tearing her apart at the edges and putting her back together the way he sees fit.

* * *

><p>Memories of Peter that never happened are at the front of her mind tonight and she doesn't want to talk or take it slow.<p>

Sylar comes through the door at dusk, when the cicadas begin to hum and the moths awaken.

Claire jumps him when he closes the door. She wraps her legs around his waist and digs her heels into his back as she claws at his shirt.

They don't make it to the bed. They crash against the wall instead, still mostly clothed when he enters her.

He doesn't say anything to her, but the way he breathes against her ear sounds like a confession.

She has a confession for him too, but it's a confession of actions, of letting go and going forward.

Fucking like this is exactly the remedy Claire needs. She isn't gentle. She scratches at his neck, bites at his flesh until she draws deep, magenta gashes. He still feels the pain, and it comforts her a little, even as it makes her jealous, that her power has germinated inside of him just perfectly.

He sags against her as he spends. The fluid drips down her thighs as they sink to the floor.

She leans against him and marvels over how familiar he has become.

Sylar plays with the damp strands of hair caked against her neck.

He's toying with an idea, she is sure of it. She can see it in the angle of his eyes as he leans forward and kisses her shoulder.

She dreads the answer, but she asks anyway, "What is it?"

"I'd ask you to tell me, but I don't think you know."

* * *

><p>She doesn't know. She asks instead, "What did you ever see in me?"<p>

"We went over this already. Before you killed me."

"Did you know, though?" she presses. "What I am? Who I really am?"

"You're Claire Bennet, the cheerleader."

"I'm being serious."

"So am I."

"Was it only my power?"

He purses his lips. "No. Claire—I just wanted you."

"I'm terrible. I'm in love with my dead uncle and I'm shacking up with a murderer." She laughs, the sound like wind whistling through a corn husk. "I'm indestructible but I'm so broken."

He brushes a thumb across her brow. "You're still the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

This thing they have isn't what she's looking for. But with eternity stretching before her and the arms of the only man who can walk it with her enveloping her, it's enough.

* * *

><p>Sylar is gone when she wakes up.<p>

This is not unusual. He often leaves early to track down a lead. She is a little surprised that there would be more than one special in a town this size, but it's happened before.

Claire gets up and pads to the bathroom. She takes her time in the shower, twisting and turning in front of the mirror afterwards for some physical sign of last night's events. Just as always, she finds nothing.

As she eats the banana and corn meal she purchases from the hotel patio, she wonders what new skill Sylar will come home with today. He already has so many.

He explained it to her once as they lay huddled together for warmth in Southern Argentina.

She had walked into the cobbler's hoping to get her shoes resoled. Sylar had been in the back, getting familiar with his brain.

Claire hadn't been angry at him, not like she would have been a few month ago. In a way, she held herself, if anyone, responsible for his behavior because she enabled him by sticking around for the aftershow. She had still felt sorry for the cobbler, though, who shouldn't have had to die so Sylar could affect plant growth.

"It seems like such a superfluous power," she had murmured against his chest that night. "Is it something you even wanted? Specifically, I mean."

She could hear the frown in his voice as he said, "Killing isn't a choice I have. With my power—"

"What _is _your original power?" She had shifted so that the top half of her body covered his and her chin dug into his sternum. "Is it like Peter's?"

His mouth had twisted at the mention of her uncle. "Sort of. I have intuitive cognition."

He may as well have been speaking gibberish.

"When I see something, I know how it works. Clocks, machinery, biological systems—anything."

The image of him scrutinizing Matthews's lower brain had come to mind.

"Is that why you look at people's brains? To figure out how their powers work?"

"Bingo. I can replicate in myself anything I see in the original biological circuitry."

"Why can't you just use a CAT scan?" The question had sounded childish, even to her own ears, but she had pressed on. "Why kill at all? Were you always a serial killer and then, _wham_, powers equaled new M.O.?"

"Don't be stupid. Of courses I didn't always kill people." He ran a hand through his hair. It was a nervous habit he had (_at times, Claire sees hints that there's something deeper he's not showing her_). "It's not like I actually _enjoy _the killing. With my power there comes a… a _hunger_ for more." He laughs, harshly. "I'm a little bit enslaved to it. So to answer your question, no, I didn't particularly want the cobbler's power, but neither could I let him go when I noticed him."

As Claire finishes her breakfast, she wonders who the unlucky person he has noticed is this time.

Peculiar, to think that if she had never been one such unlucky person, she would never have been sitting in this hot iron chair in Columbia.

Claire visits the town market and spends her time sniffing mangos and bartering over bead bracelets.

At sundown, she returns to the hotel room to wait for Sylar.

She collapses onto the bed, rearranging herself into pleasing postures and spreading wrinkles over the bedsheets.

The bats howl in the chimney as the violet twilight sinks into deep night, and still he does not return.

Watery early morning light wakes her.

Groggily, she reaches out beside her, searching for a warm body. Nothing.

Her eyes snap open and she is wide awake now as she scans the room for some sign of his presence. She realizes through the hammering of her pulse that he has never returned for the night.

Claire throws on her shoes and darts out the door, into the front room. She approaches the front desk and asks the hotel owner in clumsy Spanish, "¿Vea usted el hombre conmigo?"

His response is too elaborate for her to keep up with. She catches _gringos _and _lo siento_ and not much else, but the shaking of his head is clear enough.

She throws her _gracias _over her shoulder as she turns out the door, into the shimmering equatorial sun. Claire lets the sun bake her skin brown as she searches the town for Sylar, for death and his trappings.

Building anxiety spreads like kudzu in her blood. Their conversation from the night before comes back to her, and she realizes what she told him—_I'm in love with my dead uncle_—and for the first time faces the possibility that he's changed his mind—_she is too much work and too broken to fix, even for him_—and he has left her.

Claire plummets through every shop, traipses through the forest, lets go of her pride and her decency (_wonders why she still has any of those useless things at all_) and knocks on every door in town, peering through the windows if need be just to make sure he isn't inside pouring over someone's internal mechanisms.

She finds Sylar nowhere.

He has left her, she concludes. She figures she should be happy about it, because now she is free and she can return to California and find her family. Except she doesn't feel happy, not at all. All she feels is this dull ache in her chest that makes her pinch her nose because, hey, shouldn't she be unable to feel pain like this at all? It's not pleasant the way it usually is and it takes her a while to realize the ache she's feeling is like the time she discovered her father was not really a paper salesman (_heart break hits her hard, every time_).

* * *

><p>Someone is screaming. The sound pings like a pinball inside her ears, sharp and absurdly keening, and it takes a moment to match the burn in her throat to the cry and to understand that she is the one screaming.<p>

Claire snaps her mouth shut.

The room is still dark, but blue light filters through the curtains. It won't be long until the sun rises.

Sylar's eyes catch the light like a mirror and reflect it back like pools of silver water. His lips are quirked and his hands are gentle as he strokes the hair from her forehead.

"It's alright," he murmurs. "I'm here. I'm here."

She clings to him, constricting her arms around his ribcage and compressing until she feels the air hiss from his lungs. She feels no need to let him breathe, so she stays like this for longer than she would for a normal man.

Her eyes slip closed and her arms loosen around him as she begins to fall back asleep.

He takes deep, steady breaths as his lungs decompress and she feels thankful it was just a nightmare.

That's when she knows, of course.

_Nightmare manifestation and manipulation. Interesting._

"How could you?" Her lips catch against his skin as she tries to speak. She swallows and speaks again, voice firmer this time. "How could you do that to me?"

Sylar's expression is all innocence.

Claire hates it when he makes that face.

"Do what, Claire? Comfort you? You looked like you were having a nightmare."

She pulls away from him. Claire pulls the sheets around herself, suddenly conscious of her undress. This isn't right. He's like thirty and she's just a seventeen year old girl.

The memory of the nightmare rolls in like a tsunami, crashes against the inner walls of her skull.

She'd like to hit him, make him bleed and bleed and never stop.

She never wants him to leave her, not _ever_.

She repeats her question: "Why?"

He prowls toward her, grasping for her shoulders and pulling her beneath him. The position is reminiscent of that first night, when she'd asked him _why_, and he'd answered her with his lips and teeth until she'd had no choice but to kill him.

"I had to know," he tells her as he dips a finger low over the arch of her hips. "I had to be certain."

"Of what?" she gasps as his mouth descends to her neck and his fingers slip past the tangled sheets and between her legs.

"Of this."

She gets him. The thought doesn't frighten her the way it used to.

Sylar kisses his way down her abdomen, leaving hot, dry kisses that burn her skin.

Claire tears the remaining wisps of sheet from her body and hooks her legs around his waist.

"And are you sure now?"

He looks up at her, eyes heavy with lust and mouth crooked into a sensual line. He looks like a predator as he slinks up her body.

She likes him best like this, when he is honest with her about what he is and not trying to hide behind a sly mask of vulnerable innocence.

"_Yes_," he breathes against her mouth. "_Yes."_

* * *

><p>Dawn finds them in Mexico, near the Texas border.<p>

Sylar had teleported them there little more than an hour after Claire awoke from her nightmare.

The target he's been after is almost shamefully easy for him to find—the leader of the local drug cartel, Manuel Calavera, whose location all the locals had memorized with neurotic detail because they would never dare approach it.

Claire waits for him at a cantina. She passes the hours sipping on tap water just because she _can _and, when the local men start catcalling her and shouting, "_Oy, gringa_," downing a long line of tequila shots and drinking them all into a stupefied heap under the table.

Sylar returns for her after two, when the sun has passed its white zenith and the day's heat begins to climax.

He takes a seat across from her and rests his arms on the cool dark-wood grain of the table. Sweat runs in little rivers down his arm, plastering the front of his black wife-beater to his chest and slicking all the black hairs down flat to the moist skin. He shakes his head and mutters low, so only she can hear, "I fucking hate Mexico."

"I kind of like it."

Sylar quirks an eyebrow at her line of would-be suitors as they loll against the side of the bar. "What happened here?"

"Tequila shots."

He swipes the sweat off his jaw and rubs at the stubble. "You can't get drunk, can you? Which means I can't either anymore. Goddamnit."

She wrinkles her nose. "This one's on you. I've _never _said I liked this power."

He catches her hand. "I kind of like it. I like that you didn't die when I took your power. I like knowing that you'll be safe when I leave you alone, and that the rohypnol those locals slipped in your drink had zero effect."

Claire tries to stay still as he plays with her fingers. She feels a little naïve, because it hadn't even occurred to her that her shots could have an extra ingredient in them.

He rubs a thumb over her damp wrist, pausing over the pulse point. "I like that, no matter what, I'll always be able to find you, that there'll always be a you _to _find."

That night they go for a walk. The stars are out, and even though the cartel is in dangerous disarray after Sylar has dispatched their leader, Claire feels safe with her arms looped through his.

Desert trees cast skeletal shadows against the rocks and sand. In the distance, the stretch of homeland called Texas beckons for her.

She can't take her eyes from the Northern horizon.

Sylar reminds her that he knows her at least as well as she knows him when he states, "You want to go home."

"Yes."

"I'm surprised it took you so long."

She frowns at him. "It's not like I thought it was really an option."

"It isn't."

He's making her a little mad, she decides.

"So why bring it up?"

"I've been thinking, Claire. About the deal we made after I spared that agent back in Pennsylvania."

"What about it?" she asks slowly.

"I'm going to hold you to your promise, there's no question about that. The real question is—_will I have to_?"

Claire can't think of anything he could make her do that he hasn't already. She tilts her head (_and realizes it's one of his mannerisms just a little too late to check herself_) and gestures for him to continue.

"Claire—I want you to stay with me. Permanently."

"As opposed to what we're doing now." She doesn't mean to sound so flat.

"No. I want everything. I want… I want your heart. Promise me your heart."

Her heart. Up until now, she supposes her heart has been reserved for her family, for her father and her mother and Lyle and Mr. Muggles and (_most especially_) the memory of Peter. Except when she examines it, and tries to figure out which corner each person gets, she cannot find any spots clean of Sylar's pervasive imprint. She imagines him, drinking up the rivers of her heart's love until all that remains for everyone else are just the slimmest source streams trickling down forgotten pathways, but always leading inevitably to the ocean.

She fits his palm over the curve of her breast and the thump of her heart. "I promise. It's yours."

The words feel true.

* * *

><p>The first thing Claire does when Sylar brings them back to the States is buy a box of brown hair dye from CVS.<p>

The air conditioner hits her hard as she steps through the glass doors and metal detectors, reminding her what her life used to be like.

Sylar lurks by the checkout, examining magazine headlines and tinkering with the ten dollar watches on sale. He surreptitiously takes one and opens it up to look inside.

Claire chooses a dark color and gets Sylar to pay.

That night, she sheds the little Claire Bennet that Noah raised in Odessa like a cloak of skin.

When she emerges from the bathroom with dark, wet hair streaming over her shoulders, she emerges as Sylar's Claire.

* * *

><p>Years later, a team of agents captures her in broad daylight under the endlessly blue Wyoming sky.<p>

Sylar cannot be far, but he is preoccupied.

This time, they teleport her to Primatech Maximum Security as a precaution. The agent she spared all those years ago waits for her in the lab where they begin her testing.

She notices her father fixed in silent horror outside the glass of the testing room. The sensation she experiences when their eyes meet feels abstract, and she struggles to place it.

It does not matter a few seconds later as the knives and razors slice into her skin, releasing the old familiar mixture of pleasure and embarrassment.

The wounds heal, as they always do, leaving only pools of blood lingering in the slopes of her flesh.

The testing continues. She endures, because— _he will come for her._

* * *

><p>He does come for her.<p>

She must have died (_again_), because when he kisses her,she wakes up (_just like in a fairytale)_.

Blood runs down the walls, red as a love letter.

She clings to him and presses her ear against his heart, just to make sure he is really there.

On the far side of the room, she notices her father has collapsed clutching his chest. She feels a little pity for him, and again, that emotion she can't help but struggle with—_abandonment_.

Sylar approaches him and Claire feels the remnants of the love she felt for her father stir in her chest, coursing through trickling streams on its way to the ocean.

She grabs his arm and whispers, "Don't kill him. _Please_."

He nods.

She takes a long last look at her father as Sylar informs him, "I'm not going to kill you, Bennet. You're already having a heart attack, so, really, there's no need."

The words ache a little inside of her, but there is nothing she can do about this.

Sylar steps away and takes her into his arms. He kisses her, slow and lingering, and then he takes her home.

* * *

><p><em>AN: I hope you enjoyed this! Any questions, comments, criticism are welcome—please tell me what you think! _

_-adlyb_


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